LONDON.- The Turner Prize 2024 has been awarded to Jasleen Kaur. The winner of the £25,000 prize was announced this evening at a ceremony presented by actor James Norton at Tate Britain, and broadcast live on the BBC News channel. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the prize.
The jury congratulated all four nominated artists for each of their eloquent and distinctive presentations, representative of the high standard of British art at this present moment. Working variously with museum objects, sound and installation, personal mythologies and portraiture, the artists this year embed an intimate sense of self, family and community within the circulation of cultures, beliefs and ideas.
They awarded the prize to Jasleen Kaur, whose recent practice reflects upon everyday objects, animating them through sound and music to summon community and cultural inheritance. The jury noted the considered way in which Kaur weaves together the personal, political and spiritual in her exhibition Alter Altar, choreographing a visual and aural experience that suggests both solidarity and joy. They praised her ability to gather different voices through unexpected and playful combinations of material, from Irn-Bru to family photographs and a vintage Ford Escort, locating moments of resilience and possibility.
One of the best-known visual arts prizes in the world, the Turner Prize aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art. Established in 1984, the prize is awarded each year to a British artist for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work. The shortlisted artists for 2024 are: Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur and Delaine Le Bas.
The members of the Turner Prize 2024 jury are Rosie Cooper, Director of Wysing Arts Centre; Ekow Eshun, writer, broadcaster and curator; Sam Thorne, Director General and CEO at Japan House London; and Lydia Yee, curator and art historian. The jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain.
The exhibition of the four shortlisted artists is at Tate Britain until 16 February 2025. It is curated by Linsey Young, former Curator, Contemporary British Art and Amy Emmerson Martin, Assistant Curator, Contemporary British Art, with Sade Sarumi, Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary British Art and Laura Laing, Exhibition Assistant.
Turner Prize 2024 is supported by The John Browne Charitable Trust and The Uggla Family Foundation.
Next year the prize will be held at Cartwright Hall in Bradford as part of the 2025 UK City of Culture celebrations.
Jasleen Kaur was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1986. Kaur studied Silversmithing and Jewellery at Glasgow School of Art in 2008 and Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery at the Royal College of Art, London in 2009-10. Jasleen Kaur is 38 years old and lives and works in London.
Kaur’s work explores how cultural memory is layered in the objects and rituals that surround us, she has described this as ‘making sense of what is out of view or withheld’. Many of those ‘out of view’ subjects relate to the impacts of imperialism on the narratives and histories we inherit. She cuts and pastes objects from everyday life into the gallery to reimagine tradition and agreed myths.
Jasleen Kaur is nominated for her solo exhibition Alter Altar, held at Tramway, Glasgow (31 March – 8 October 2023), curated by Claire Jackson. The exhibition consisted of sculpture, installation, print based work and critically, sound. Sound was embedded into the exhibition by way of worship bells, Sufi Islamic devotional music, Indian Harmonium, and pop tracks played via a car stereo, creating a polyphony of references and experiences that reflected the pluralities of religious identities, lineages of community and resistance. A perspex ‘sky’, suspended over an oversized Axminster carpet is littered with ephemera from everyday life - a heady mix of personal, political, social and religious histories and iconographies. The seemingly domestic objects strewn across ‘the heavens’ reference the dualism of the 'political-mystic' - a figure from her heritage - and offer a space for gathering and reflection.
